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If the (Thrown) Shoe Fits . . .

President Bush got a huge chuckle out of Sunday’s shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad.

“I didn’t know what the guy said, but I saw his sole,” Mr. Bush said, prompting laughter from White House reporters who talked with him once he was safely back aboard Air Force One.

“I’m pretty good at ducking, as most of you will know. . . . I’m talking about ducking your questions,” he added teasingly.

Muntader al-Zaidi, an Iraqi TV journalist, threw his shoes at President Bush during a joint press conference on Sunday with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad’s super-secure Green Zone. Hitting someone with a shoe is a particularly strong rebuke in Iraqi culture.

The president — who ducked when the shoe was thrown — was uninjured. But the incident overshadowed media coverage of the trip in the Arab world and transformed Mr. al-Zaidi into a symbolic figure in the debate about the American military’s presence in Iraq.

Mr. Bush refused to see it that way, however.

“I don’t think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq. You can try to do that if you want to. I don’t think it would be accurate,” he insisted.

More than any other issue, the war of choice in Iraq will define Mr. Bush’s legacy. Yet he remains stubbornly convinced that the 2003 invasion was the absolute right thing to do.

No one laments the fact that Saddam Hussein is gone. But there are serious questions about whether war was the right approach and whether Iraq is better off given how Mr. Bush and his administration mishandled the aftermath of the invasion.

As the Times reported recently, an unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country.

That effort eventually became a $100 billion failure through bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence, and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history — the first official account of its kind — also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch, in a report released Monday, concluded that Iraq’s central criminal court, the country’s chief judicial institution, has fallen short of international and Iraqi constitutional standards.

The report portrays a system under which defendants are often abused in custody and held for months or even years before being referred to a judge. When cases are heard, the defendants are often left without adequate defense counsel to answer charges, which are frequently based on secret informants, coerced confessions and flimsy evidence. Juvenile detainees are often held with adults, the report found, despite an Iraqi law ordering them to be held separately.

Which brings us back to Mr. al-Zaidi.

Witnesses told The Times that Mr. Zaidi had been severely beaten by security officers on Sunday after being tackled at the press conference and dragged out. While he has not been formally charged, Iraqi officials said he faced up to seven years in prison if convicted of committing an act of aggression against a visiting head of state.

No doubt he must face the charges — and punished if found guilty. But we hope Mr. Bush does not only see the incident as a source of endless “shoe” jokes. He must make clear to Baghdad that the United States does not condone abuse of defendants and that it expects Mr. al-Zaidi to have a speedy trial, a fair process and access to a competent lawyer.

I myself would have hit President Bush with something much harder, and more useful, than a shoe: a trial in the Hague.

The argument could easily be made that Bush and his minions are war criminals who knowingly lied to the U.S. and Britain and led us into a war that has killed at LEAST 100,000 Iraqis (according to the Lancet, it’s more like 500,000) and 4200 U.S. soldiers.

Saddam was a tyrant, but many Iraqis fared better under him than they have in the past six years. As an American, I am so angry that this war has been waged in my name and by my government. SHAME on Bush!

Serendipitously, though out of sheer frustration, a single Iraqi man has found the perfect way to express a final verdict on the Bush years. The only thing to do now is for Americans — every man, woman and child who cares about our country — to do the same and mail a symbolic pair of shoes to the White House. Call it our way of “Shoe-ing him out.”

This was a brave, important act of dissent by Mr. Muntader al-Zaidi, perhaps the most important and visible act of resistance since March, 2003. We all should honor his act and demand his safe care by officials.

We must also support him. We can all do this. If you are in DC now, or before the inauguration on January 20, 2009, please go to the White House and toss a pair of shoes over the fence for President Bush to see as an act of solidarity with Mr. al-Zaidi. Maybe after hundreds more shoes, Bush will get the point.

Why would having someone throw a shoe at Mr. Bush make any difference to him? If he had the consciousness to wake up to any kind of outside opinion beside his own, surely he would have done so by now. I feel sorry for the poor reporter who was just doing what a lot of others might have liked to do for a long time.

There is a move toward impeaching the president and Vice President but it gets little attention in the press. It’s too bad that more people, both in elected positions and not, do not seem willing to confront these men through proper channels for their transgressions. Both men violated their oaths of office and did not keep to their pledges to uphold and defend the Constitution, and their entire administration followed suit. Our leaders should be held accountable for what they have wrought. People who are brave (and foolish) enough to throw things wouldn’t be necessary if more citizens cared about what Mr. Bush and his cohorts have done in Iraq, and in the world, and were willing to press forward seeing that something is done about it.

The sooner Bush pardons him or facilitates the process of ensuring that he be dealt with justly — you cannot really cut off his shoes and cutting off his hand is out of the question — the better it will be for the defendant.

As for Bush, he fails to see that the symbolism of the shoe (as one says — the leather treatment to get out) or the possibility that more than one person is upset about the war.
Bush will never admit that he was wrong; that is the sad part of it. No matter how many dollars or lives wasted. Maybe he should have been hit – it might have knocked some sense into him.

The President handled the situation well. The vast majority of Iraqis felt shamed by al-Zaidi’s actions against a visiting Head of State. And of course, he disgraced himself and the profession of journalism. There will be those in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world who applaud his actions–primarily those among the Shiite opposition and those who supported Saddam Hussein and benefited from his corrupt regime. Of course, if someone had tried doing this to Saddam, they would tortured and then fed to his dogs. This is an example of how democracy has come to Iraq. More disturbing than this incident, is the support al-Zaidi has received from the leftists in this country (as can be readily seen in the comments written in this paper). I agree that he should receive a fair trial for his act of assault. That would show how far Iraq has come from the era of Saddam Hussein.

Somebody must’ve read my comment yesterday in another newspaper, liked it, and published an opinion. More power to you.

You cannot blame/accuse anyone until you’ve been in his/her shoes. And if the shoe fits/hits its target… you know the rest. If Bush would’ve been hit in his head, he may, just may have felt what the Iraqi’s think of him.

i have begun to wonder whether the phrase “war of choice,” which appears in this article but is not unique to it, is becoming another euphemism best avoided. similar to the initial resistance to use of the word “torture,” which finally gave way to inescapable facts, “war of choice” seems to avoid the directness of a more traditional but more clear word such as “invasion.” which one could further qualify as one pleases. I would say “unprovoked invasion.” This better captures Mr. Bush’s actions and helps better explain why people want to throw shoes at his head.

Zaidi’s act was pretty cheap and cowardly because he knew he could get away with it because America is a civilized nation. Just imagine him pulling a similar stunt against the president of Syria, or Egypt, or Tunisia.

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